More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol' Fox

[Recoil]

More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

OK,

So my Lost thread turned out to be more of a rant about them running commercials every six minutes, not so much there were actually more of them, as it turned out...but not so with this thread!

Fox. More specifically the creators of 24 on Fox. Apparently they have sold their soul to Cisco.

I know this has some up before on some "24" threads. Chloe saying something like "Transfer the image to the Cisco IP Phone" or having Cisco's company logo prominently displayed all over CTU like its a billboard office.

Well, I have been watching the show "Vanished" on Fox this season, which is from the creators of "24." You can tell, because it has the same feel and flow to it. Anyway so last night the FBI Detective is told that a bug was found in the shirt of a murder suspect and that scientists in 2 other cities were going to analyze it. He replies back "I want to see it myself lets use "The Cisco." The Cisco. Are you kidding me? Talk about forced advertising dialogue. The Cisco isn't a product of its own, its a company. They don't eve know HOW to use the dialogue they are apparently paid to put in the show, so it comes out even clunkier.

So then they go into a room with 3 plasma displays next to each other. The displays on the left and right ends have guys on them via a Video Conference and the middle screen is blank...except for a HUGE Cisco Logo on it. Cause, you know, offices always have that stuff set up like that. So the Cisco logo is there until a third guy joins and then its a 4 way conference. Video conferencing, such a new technology eh?

Anyway, it all seemed really lame to me and extremely out of place. The forced dialogue was cringe worthy. So I guess its not enough we all have to watch 20 minutes of commercials during breaks in our shows, now we have to get used to watching commercials IN our shows.

Nice.

 

[LondosHair]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

It's funny... they're doing more commercials because they think they're losing revenue thanks to DVRs and TiVo. All they're doing, though, is just giving people the opportunity to skip through even more commercials with a single click.

As for Cisco, if you ever watch Eureka on Sci-Fi, which is a good show regardless, there are lots of shots of the Cisco brand. Haven't heard them use the name, though...

 

[Sindatur]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

Recoil, so is this more blatant than the AFIS reference that is (or was, maybe it's been replaced by Cisco) on so many cop shows? AFIS is a subsidary of NEC, and they make a Fingerprint system called Automatic Fingerprint Indentification System (AFIS). So Cop shows are known for saying "Did you run him through the AFIS"?

 

[Recoil]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

Don't know if it is or isn't. I don't watch Cop shows. I do know that these instances at Fox are getting beyond tacky and annoying.

 

[Sindatur]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

I don't actually watch cop shows either, but, am very famililar with the AFIS product, so, I hear people mention it often.

 

[AntonyF]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

Advertising is infecting things more and more. Bands in TV shows is a symptom of this. I remember in Roswell, that was one of the worst integrations. They were on the hunt for an alien, went to a university and Nelly Furtado was there. So they stop to boogy to her, before resuming their quest.

Playing Splinter Cell Chaos Theory gives more examples of it. They pan back on a ship, and there's packet of Airwaves sitting there. And then an Airwaves blimp later in the game.

In One Tree Hill they're always drinking Sunkist, and funnily enough Sunkist just sponsored an event in OTH.

They could be more subtle. This just proves that rather than soaking it in we're just laughing at it all.

 

[KoshFan]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

And in one episode of B5, there was a Zima ad in the background!

...oh, wait. That was mockery.

 

[GaribaldisHair]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

Nice to see you guys doing the marketing job for them ... I don't even watch most of these, and now I am aware of the brand names that are cropping up in cool shows. Name awareness rules!

Incidentally, I was aware of the AFIS thing coming up in cop show after cop show ... I just didn't know that it was actually a company's brand name. I just assumed it was a generic name for the system - after all, Automatic Fingerprint Identification System doesn't really scream "brand name" at me.

 

[PillowRock]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

So Cop shows are known for saying "Did you run him through the AFIS"?

Really? That phrasing doesn't sound like what I've registered. What sounds familiar from repeated hearings is "Did you run him through AFIS?" (Without the "the" before "AFIS".)

The other thing about that one:
The way that it was used always sounded much more natural. I don't work around law enforcement, but the way that was used meshes with how I hear other special purpose processor names used. (Plus, I agree that the name doesn't scream "proprietary". It sounds like it could be the name of a federal finger print database.)

The Cisco references in 24, on the other hand, don't sound natural or ring true ..... and worse, as was pointed out, don't always make any sense at all even if you accept the forced nature of the phrasing.

 

[Sindatur]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

So Cop shows are known for saying "Did you run him through the AFIS"?

Really? That phrasing doesn't sound like what I've registered. What sounds familiar from repeated hearings is "Did you run him through AFIS?" (Without the "the" before "AFIS".)

The other thing about that one:
The way that it was used always sounded much more natural. I don't work around law enforcement, but the way that was used meshes with how I hear other special purpose processor names used. (Plus, I agree that the name doesn't scream "proprietary". It sounds like it could be the name of a federal finger print database.)

The Cisco references in 24, on the other hand, don't sound natural or ring true ..... and worse, as was pointed out, don't always make any sense at all even if you accept the forced nature of the phrasing.

AFIS is a Federal system, more or less. It's a shared Database, with Police stations and Federal agencies as clients, all sharing the same finger print database. When you become a client, your fingerprint database, goes into the general pool.

 

[darth_librarian]

Re: More blatant corporate whoring: Good Ol\' Fox

The video game thing is getting silly. Online games such as the latest Battlefield pipe in live ads from different suppliers every time you play.

I guess more of this cleverly 'concealed' marketing is going to happen as all forms of media move to a record /download / pay per view / model.